News from the Front #66:

Suckers for Junk Science? Bush Administration Defends Sucker Listings

On May 12, 2002, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service published a
Federal Register notice containing its ruling on administrative petitions to delist two species of sucker fish found in
the Klamath Basin. The fish were listed as endangered in 1988, on grounds that
almost immediately proved to be false. Biologists claimed, for
example, that the fish had not successfully spawned in 18 years. Yet
more than ten times the expected population was found soon after the listings, with fish from all age
classes, proving that the suckers had been spawning all along.

On July 16, 2001, David Vogel, a biologist engaged by the Klamath Water Users
Association, testified before Congress as to the serious deficiencies in the
sucker listing. His
testimony, along with the documents in the files of the
Service, demonstrates that there is no evidence that the suckers are endangered
at all. It was not merely junk science that provided the rationale for the
seizure of Klamath Basin water; it was junk science that drove the listing in
the first place. One might go so far as to denounce the entire affair as a
particularly vicious hoax.

On October 19, 2001, I filed a petition to delist the suckers. The law required a formal response within 90 days, "to the
extent practicable". The Service's local office spit out a draft
finding (which they refused to disclose) within 90 days, and then the process
ground to a halt. Eventually on March 12, 2002, I filed a complaint to pry
loose the 90-day finding. When that didn't work, on May 6, 2002, I filed a motion for
summary judgment. The Service then issued its finding: "no
substantial information has been presented or found that would indicate that
delisting of the Lost River sucker or shortnose sucker may be warranted".

The Notice begins by noting, correctly, that severe overfishing (principally
by the Klamath Tribe, though the Notice does not say so) drove populations down
until the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife halted the fishing in
1987. But rather than wait for the fishing ban to have the obvious and
anticipated effect, the Feds rushed in to list the suckers in 1988.

According to the Service, we should not be misled by the fact that scientists found virtually no suckers
in the 1980s, and hundreds of thousands of them in the 1990s. The Service
says that “comparisons
between current [population] estimates and those made during the fishery, prior
to its termination in 1987, are not informative due to extreme differences in
methodology”.

But
the scientists prior to listing were trying to estimate sucker populations, and
so were the scientists afterwards. For the Service to say that we can't
compare the estimates at all is simply a pseudo-scientific way of saying
that the Service refuses to acknowledge the simple truth: sucker
populations went way up after overfishing stopped, and are no longer in any
appreciable danger of extinction.

Such a finding is anathema to the Service and its employees,
many of whom would be out of a job but for the listings. Thus the Service
claims the suckers are still "endangered", and that:

"The endangered status of the suckers is based upon
continuing threats to the populations.The
2001 status review identifies continuing threats to the two species which
warrant maintaining their listing as endangered under the Endangered Species
Act, including but not limited to habitat loss, degradation of water quality,
periodic fish die-offs, and entrainment into water diversions.”

This is the grossest sort of junk science. Perhaps the
most egregious statement is the claim that "entrainment" (being sucked
into irrigation canals) poses a meaningful threat of extinction. Here is a map of where the suckers are
found, at the Northern end of Upper Klamath Lake:

The water intake for the Klamath Project is at the very bottom
of this picture. While it may escape the comprehension of our
heavily-indoctrinated biologists, a population of hundreds of thousands of fish cannot possibly be pushed to extinction by sucking out a few
stray fish from the fringes of the population.

Ironically, at the same time the Service complains in the
Notice about "entrainment", it complains in its press
release heralding the Notice about "barriers to movement between
different populations". Where are the different populations? At
the other end of canals where suckers are entrained, of course. So suckers
are endangered because the Project facilities allow them to move between bodies
of water, and endangered because they can't move between bodies of water.
This is the sort of contradictory, ideologically-driven "thinking"
that has infested all the natural resource agencies.

The second pillar of continued "endangered" status,
"habitat loss", fares no better. In
fact, the development of the Klamath Basin Project significantly increased the
total quantity and quality of habitat available to the suckers, insofar as Upper
Klamath Lake is bigger, as are other reservoirs where suckers are
found. That is probably why, in the
Notice, the Service does not identify
the magnitude of alleged habitat loss (the press release calls it
"extensive"), identify any particular loss, or explain the baseline
against which such loss is to be measured. Nor does the Service identify
the effect of the alleged loss upon the risk of sucker extinction.Expert
testimony of David Vogel, ignored in the Notice, states that “it is now
obvious that the species' habitats were sufficiently good [at the time of
listing] to provide suitable conditions for these populations”.

The third pillar of continued "endangered" status is
"water quality" problems. But prior
to development of the Klamath Basin Project, the sucker habitat was frequently a
stinking swamp from which early explorers could not even water their horses
because the water quality was so bad. That is probably why the Service
does not identify the magnitude of alleged water quality degradation, any
particular examples of water quality degradation, the baseline against which
such degradation is to be measured, or the effect of such degradation.
The press release amplifies the claim to "extremely poor water
quality", something I have never seen in my trips to the Upper Klamath
Lake.

The
final pillar for continued "endangered" status is "periodic fish
die-offs". Obviously, if die-offs are "periodic", by
definition they continue over and over without causing the extinction of the
population. The Service has no evidence whatsoever that the occasional
fish kills (from late summer algae growth) threaten the continued existence of
the suckers, which have survived droughts for centuries with far less refuge
than they have now. In fact, tagging research has demonstrated that only
tiny fraction of tagged fish were recovered in the kills (never more than 1%). All available
evidence suggests that what the press release calls "catastrophic fish
kills" don't make much of a dent in the population, much less reduce
appreciably the probability that suckers will persist in the Basin.

The
bottom line is that no person with common sense, a quality carefully bred out of
this generation of natural resource managers, would find that the suckers are in
any appreciable danger of extinction, or that they qualify for protection under
the Endangered Species Act. The original listing was a mistake, if not a
fraud, and now the Bush Administration is, knowingly or unknowingly perpetuating
the fraud. I say "Bush Adminstration" because as far as I know,
the delay in issuing the Notice came because it had to be approved by the
new Director of the Service, a Bush appointee.

What
can be done? I'll probably amend the complaint in the lawsuit to challenge
the Notice determination as defective, but most likely, all that the Justice
Department will have to do to beat the lawsuit is say that it raises a question
of "science", not law. Environmentalism is now the official
religion of the United States, established through vigorous indoctrination in
the public schools and universities. As a general matter, the precepts of
this Faith, masquerading as "science", may no longer be questioned in
the courts.

As
I have said over and over and over again, the only real solution is
political. Until we elect politicians who can even tell that the Emperor
has no clothes, much less the courage so to declare, things will continue to
deteriorate on all fronts. One of the petitioners for delisting, Walt
Moden, is running for Commissioner of Klamath County. If we had a hundred
more like him, we'd have the beginning of an army with which we could win the
War on the West.